Monday, September 09. 2013

PostgreSQL 9.3 came out today and we are excited to start using the new features. PostGIS 2.1.0 came out about 2 weeks ago and pgRouting just cut the RC 3 release. For windows PostGIS users who are impatient to try the new suite, binaries
can be found on the Unreleased versions of PostGIS.net windows page.

We are planning an official release sometime probably next week on StackBuilder. We are waiting for release of pgRouting 2.0 before we do which should be out next week. This new 2.1 release will be dubbed the PostGIS 2.1 Bundle since it will have more than just PostGIS. It will include postgis extensions (postgis which includes geometry,raster, geography) , postgis_topology, postgis_tiger_geocoder), address_standardizer extension (a companion to tiger geocoder), and pgRouting 2.0.

For those people running PostGIS 2.0 and PostgreSQL 9.0+, especially (raster and geography) users, I highly recommend you jump to PostGIS 2.1. PostGIS 2.1 is a soft upgrade from 2.0. For raster there are enormous speed improvements and new functions. The ones we are most excited about in raster are the much much much faster ST_Clip and ST_Union functions (which now does multi-band in addition to being faster). These two functions are highly important since they are generally the first step in many raster workflows. Geography has speed improvements for point in poly and a ST_Segmentize function done on the spheroid (important for long range). Geometry has a couple of new functions. The Enhanced 3D functionality provided by SFCGAL is brand new and probably won't be distributed by many package maintainers until PostGIS 2.2 where it will garner a few more features and stability improvements.